|----------------------------------------------- make sure your browser window is at least this wide ---------------------------------------------------|

(I can't write code too well, I'm a hardware guy remember, but hey this stuff is too good not to share!)

For more information about this Jaguar, and a discourse on why it is NOT your typical Jaguar, click here.

*WARNING* The following is a diary of a sometimes wild and adventurous week. It was written on the spot, or within hours of the events depicted. In it I express opinions about people, places, and things which some may find anywhere from mildly offensive to outright slanderous. But hey, this is the web, so let the dirt fly! You have been warned...

May 14th, 1999

I'm flying off to Boston this coming Saturday for a week with my Dad at the New England 1000 classic car rally. We'll be trying to reprise our beginner's luck and turn in a good show this year... between having more fun than should be allowed.

I'll be bringing along my PowerBook and a digital camera and if I can get some semblance of a reliable net connection I'll update these pages as the week progesses.

Until then you can satisfy yourself with the pics from last year which can be found here.

ok here it is...

May 15.

Fly from Seattle to Chicago. I have a 1+ hour layover at O'Hare. I walk around seeking the sweet spot for my Ricochet wireless modem that should exist somewhere - but never find it. So I'm off the Net and just about off the Grid too since an AC outlet is damn near impossible to find anywhere in the gate areas. I finally find one in an empty hallway near the American Airlines executive lounge - so I plop down on the floor and juice up the powerbook about halfway before I have to yank and fly.

Good thing too. The next leg of the journey is a packed to the gills 737 to Boston, and the guy next to me has a CD player with headphones that put more sound out around his head than into his ears. I fire up the MP3 player on the 2400c and blast tunes all the way to Boston. I had just upgraded the powerbook to 8.6 last week and with the new MacOS nanokernel I get about twice the battery life out of the laptop. I just created a RAM disk for the MP3 files and put the harddrive to sleep... the juice ran out just as we were told to put our toys away by the flight crew. Arrive in Boston and meet my Dad and sister Cathy. Pull out the ricochet just to see if I can get on the net at Logan... no luck. Had a great Thai food dinner with Mom and Dad, and Cathy, Tim and their two daughters Lauren and Caroline.

May 16.

Drag my jetlagged ass out of bed and eat breakfast with the whole crew and make the drive from Boston out to upstate New York with Dad in the rental car. I don't make a very good navigator for Dad since I'm still dealing with things in "western scale" (where driving to the next state is an all day, or more, affair.) and things happen way to soon in the east. The Jag had been shipped from Texas up to the rally start at the Sagamore Inn. We check in, find the car and give a good washing and take a quick spin around the area. We discover that, unlike last year we are the only E-Type entered. Walking up to the main building we stop and admire a few other cars, including a mid-30s MG and John McCaw's Ferrari. Later we have dinner and meet up with many folks from last year. After the obligatory stop with the "famous navigator's school" it is off to bed. I fiddle with trying to dial into my mom's AOL account via a PPP connection and never get it to work... Grrr. Crank out some HTML and suck the quicktake camera dry for the night and drift off to sleep...

Getting the Jag ready for the week.

Starting off on a bad foot. Dad and I are not really in a groove yet. I mess up a couple of navigation points (one of which is a directional error on the course sheets, one of which is my own stupidity) So we end up cutting it real close to the first leg final checkpoint and we end up with a one second penalty. Grr. It took us three days do rack up one second last year, now we start off one second behind. Oh well. Many other folks were screwed up by the course sheet error too including last years winner John Burton in his 1967 Lotus Europa. He was pulled over by a cop when trying to make it back on course.

I went up in the first group of ten cars. The Jag performed wonderfully. The course was about 3 miles long and gaining about 2000 vertical feet. I got a great start and the machine powered around the curvy course well. A lot of work has gone into the machine since last year and it showed here. Better suspension and tires. I kept the pedal on the floor for most every interval between the curves and played back and forth between 2nd and 3rd gear. It slid a bit around a couple of the curves but so long as I stayed with it and did not ease off the pedal it kept its nose pointed the right way and powered out. I topped off in what seemed like a just a minute or two but in reality was 3:53. This turned out to be the best time so far, even with a couple of Ferrari's and a specially tricked out rally/hillclimb 1971 Volvo 142R-S Sport. The latter I can excuse with having a 4.2 liter 6 to his sub 2.5 4cyl. My time stood until David Fischer (a far better driver than I!) came up in his 6-cylinder Porsche 914 and beat me by a full 10 seconds. I heard later that Alan Jackson (yes the C&W singer... I guess he does have money, but his choice of Fords is a little different than Pickup trucks!) in his 1966 Shelby Cobra 427sc managed to beat us all even after he spun out and mashed his front bumper. Yeah, the Cobra is an awesome machine. Somehow we always end up in the same class as the Cobras in these events. Last year they (took pity on us and) changed the classes for the speed events and moved the Cobras to another class thankfully. Here is the view from atop Mt. Ascutney with the Jag and Keith and Adine Kretschmer's beautiful 1952 Morgan:

(Ok, I know I'm wasting your bandwidth showing this pic twice, but it sure is pretty eh?)

We then took off for Lunch in Grafton where we shared a table with some great Porche people: Evan and Jule Silvi and David Fischer (who is driving the rally without a navigator - since his wife could not make it - and is using Evan & Jule as a rabbit.) They are both driving 914s this year.

Two more TSD (Time, Speed, Distance) events followed. I drove the second leg and we zeroed out. Dad likes the way I finish so we are switching drivers now whenever we come to the end of a leg... I guess I'm now a late 9th inning reliever. With that plan we zeroed the last leg too.

We had a great dinner and spent the night at the Cranmore resort.

May 18th.

One TSD followed by some speed events at Lebanon speedway in NY. First we took on the quarter mile dragstrip. The pan was very slippery and hard to get off the line like I did on the hill climb, but we both finish the quarter over 90 mph. As soon as I can dig up the times I'll post them here.

A nice couple of shots at the dragstrip.

Next we did a gymkhana (flat track around cones). Dad did real well. I told him before he started that, based on my experience on the hillclimb that the car would power out of a slide should he start losing the rear end. He didn't need to worry. the car did very well and he turned in a time of 0:44:64. I took the wheel next and during my practice run I powered out of a back turn a little too early and lost the rear and started to fishtail. Apparently the back end recovers better on an incline because I ended up spinning all the way around! Everyone cheered and then I took my "real run"... (having found out where the edge of the envelope was) I did just OK... 0:44:68.

It was kind of cool spinning and fishtailing around... I kept trying to power out of it but all I did was slide and skid even more... I guess I could use some instruction. =) Too much car, too little driver. Well, at least I did it on my practice run, not the real timed one. I just kept pushing it farther and harder as the practice went along and I guess I found the edge. Heh. +)

We then had two very long TSD stages where we the navigation was minimal and the road driving was enjoyable and wonderful. we zeroed the first leg after the speed events. Then we had lunch in a real nice but very unusual place called Longfellows.

Then on the last stage (where we finished at the Olympic Ski Jumps at Lake Placid NY, we arrived so far ahead that when I went ahead on foot to check our time against the official rally time I discovered that we were one second off. We decided to compensate and try to arrive at 17:22:59... well mathematical midgets that we are we really should have been there at 17:23:01! So according to our lamebrained calculations we zeroed, but by official rally time we were 2 seconds early. Doh!

Oh well.

We went to the hotel and washed the jag and put it under wraps (as best as a British car can I guess) since rain is forcasted for tomorrow.

Had a wonderful dinner with Keith and Adine Kretschmer at the Mirror Lake Inn at Lake Placid. They are thinking of moving to my part of the world (over on the Olympic Penninsula actually) and they are great folks to talk with. All of the participants to date have made great company.

I'm getting so many good photos that I think I'll just put up a pics page.

May 19th. Rain, rain, and more rain...

It started raining before breakfast and never stopped all day both outside and inside the Jaguar. Unfortunately the TSD stages get harder as the week goes by with less and less margin for error and higher average speeds. Road conditions were dicey and at times miserable. All it took was a school bus, truck, or some bozo driving down the road in a front loader to delay you enough to start racking up serious penalty points. I drove the first two legs and we zeroed out both.

Left: Two wet guys in a leaky Jag.

Above: On the Ferry across Lake Champlain.

We then ferried across Lake Champlain into Vermont for lunch. One more transit (with Dad driving) over Smuggler's Notch into Stowe, where a blonde in a Ford Expedition nearly killed us. She pulled out to turn left right in front of us and Dad swerved all the way across the road over to the left shoulder to avoid her. Had there been oncoming traffic we would have been dead meat. She didn't even stop!

Next leg took us over a Notch at Mad River Glen and the rain was so hard and passing was damn near impossible. We were just short of bailing water out of the car and I taught my dad a new Seattle Trick: Use a squeegee to cut through windshield fog. I used to carry a squeegee in my old 1973 VW SuperBeetle after the fan conked out to wipe away the fog. Dad happened to have a little rubber burnisher that he used to flatten out rally door stickers from the Copper State 1000 in the trunk. So I spent the leg wiping the windshield as Dad very nervously drove through the driving rain, fog, and relentlessly stupid and slow Vermont drivers. As we neared the end of the leg even basic math told us that it would be unlikely that we'd make it on time. Things were *very* tense and Dad was just about crawling out of his skin because we had to go faster but going any faster on the roads we were on would have been suicide. Thankfully the roads levelled out and got wider and less curvy for the last four miles and we were able to push it past 60mph for a long enough stretch to just catch up. Some miracle happened and the bozo Vermont drivers left the road like the parting of the Red Sea and we pulled up to the checkpoint with 58 seconds to spare! We decided that we did not have enough time to switch drivers to let me cross the final cone, and when the final 10 seconds started counting down all hell broke loose. First a rally staffer(!) actually walked in front of our car as we approached the final checkpoint causing my Dad to just about throw a rod out of his skull and then once we resumed our crawl to within 5 feet of the marker cone a Mercedes 300sl roadster who was obviously very late, pulled alongside as if to pass us. Needless to say, we were a BIT distracted! As I handed the score sheet to the timer I thought Dad was going to literally explode and fill the car with an even more interesting mixture of liquids. I just climbed out and tried to relax and chill out a bit.

We were off by one second.

This last leg had ended up at RPM, which is the Markowski's Ferarri shop. They had an incredible collection of stored, and in-rebuild cars, from a late teens(?) Fiat to some amazing Ferarris. I walked out to the barn and found a DeLorean, a few Alfas, some british roadsters, a Mustang, the shell of a Mini Cooper and even a VW rabbit pickup. After both of us had unwound a bit we drove off for some gasoline and the hotel.

Q: How do you keep a British Roadster dry?

A: Duct tape and Towels of course!

You would think that people who live in as rainy a climate as Britain could avoid building a car that took on water like a submarine with a screen door!

One final note on the rain. Of the four open topped cars (The MG PB/Lester, the 2 Jag C-Types, and the Cobra) only Alan and Denise Jackson stuck to it and made it all the way through the day. Later Denise Jackson remarked that she was due a rather weighty chunk of jewelry in payment for her patience that day! Mike and Jill Griffin in one of the C-Types bailed out at lunchtime and later called Rich Taylor the Rally organizer and let him know they had checked into a B&B and that they would try and catch up the next day. Rich, knowing the town where they were staying mentioned that there was a nice Indian resturant down the street. Jill replied that since they didn't have their luggage and only had their wet driving suits they were huddling and cuddling in their room quite naked, but having some fun nonetheless! In retrospect our leaky cat wasn't so bad after all!

After diner Evan Silvi asks the classic "desert island" question "If you could have any 3 cars in the rally for a week each which would you take?" He qualifies that by adding you needn't worry about cost or upkeep, just driving it. I answer first: The 1934 MG PB/Lester owned by Joseph & Theresa DeLucia (I have a thing for pre-war cars I guess), the Ferarri Testa Rossa owned by John McCaw, and Dad's Jag of course. Dad's answers were the Testa Rossa, any of the Mercedes 300sl roadsters (disc brakes please) and I think his last was one of the NART Spyder Ferraris. Evan said if he weren't married he'd want Dad's jag because it was a "Babe Magnet" in his words. But since he was married he'd want the Lanica Fulvia Zagato Sport. It is an exceedingly quirky Italina V-4 with a beautiful shape to it driven by Jimmy Dobbs III & Ben Fisher. Next he'd take John Payson's AC Aceca. He seems to think it is a "perfectly shaped car." I think his last pick was one of the two Alfa Romeo Guiliettas. One was a coupe and the other a veloce... I bet he'd want the coupe based on his earlier picks.

May 20th, Good day Sunshine!

Whoo Hoo! The sun is back out again and the top comes down on the jag! It is clear and cool and a great day for a rally. We start off with me driving the first leg. We are flying along through Vermont farm country and have just passed Ron & Whitney Gaeta in their 1959 Jaguar XK-150 roadster when I lose my digital.forest hat off my head at 80mph. Dad won't let me stop and get it... but there are boxes of them back at the office.

We arrive at the fish hatchery checkpoint with lots of time to spare. But right as we are about to begin our run to the checkpoint another participant (who turns out to be 10 minutes early) heads for the checkpoint ahead of us. As a result of the confusion we take a 2 second penalty.

The next leg is a long run to Calvin Coolidge's birthplace. Dad drives and we arrive in time for me to walk up and check our watch. Dad is talking with some other folks and we end up rushing a bit to get in the car for the final 100 yards and as we hop in the car I forget to give Dad the watch. At this moment I'm both the navigator and the driver since we don't have time to take the watch off my wrist. I can't do three things at once, drive, watch the line and read the watch so I screw up and come in one second early. I feel like a total idiot.

We head down to a Sunoco station for a fix of 94 octane gasoline, and as I'm checking the oil I notice a stabilizer bar off the front torsion bar. I try doing emergency repairs on the front suspension with my bare hands, with little success. We pull over next to the garage and I finally manage to get the stabilizer back on with a crescent wrench, a socket driver and a big orange rubber hammer. In the process I get my prized red 1998 New England 1000 jacket all dirty as I'm bear hugging the front tire and lifting the front end with my back to unweight the suspension.

Left: Chuck wresting the front suspension.

Right: See it is a babe magnet! Jule Silvi gets a ride in the E-Type.

We trade cars on a transit leg to lunch with Evan & Jule Silvi (& a frog) who own a killer 914. Dad drives and I hang out the roof taking pictures of the Jag, and the Kretchmers' Morgan. Evan parks the jag at a meter in front of the resturant and we leave his Porsche in the official parking lot where the next leg starts. We eat lunch with the Kretschmers in a large and somewhat chaotic inn. Our service is so late that we end up at the back of the pack for the next leg. As dad is finishing up his lunch I head out to buy a hat that I saw in a shop next to the inn to replace the one that was blown off . I walk out to the jag and their are two women standing in front of it smoking cigarettes and talking. As I walk up and open up the trunk one tells me how ugly the car is. I want to speak the truth and tell her how ugly SHE is but I figure she already knew that. I walk into the shop and grab the hat I want and it turns out that she works there. I ask how much for the hat and she says "$10" but adds under her breath "but since you are in that car it should be $10,000." I almost walked out and told her to keep the hat and her stuck-up "inverse elitist" podunk VermontHippie attitude but saving my skin from sunburn was more important to me at the moment than correcting the terminally ignorant.

Dad drives the next leg to the ferry back to upstate New York but I flub the finish and get us another second penalty. This is obviously not our day and our solid second place standing is now certainly blown.

The ferry ride is weird because it is a small open topped boat unseen in Washington state waters. More like a barge than a ferry. It probably had it's most expensive cargoes this day. Our trip was nothing but rally participants and a lone, very out of place beater Chevy Blazer. Our Jag was parked next to Alan Jackson's Cobra 427 so dad told him about the Texas rally in the fall that is sponsored by Ford and draws about a dozen Cobras. Dad's impression, (similar to mine the one time I talked with him) was that he was very unapproachable and seemed to keep his distance. I guess fame sucks because he seemed not to enjoy himself too much at least he did not seem to participate socially with the group. I guess money can buy you some happiness but fame takes it away from you.

Cool license plate though. Yee Haw!

I drive the last leg back to the Sagamore Inn and since we can't seem to get a zero with me driving Dad takes over for the last trip through the cones. Thankfully Ralph Walley is manning the checkpoint and he always seems just a *bit* more generous with his zeroes and we manage to finally get one. Our bags aren't in our room so I take the Jag around the hotel and snap as many shots of the cars as possible. At breakfast somebody suggested that I try and show every car that participated on my website. That will be a tough task since we were late arriving the first day and I didn't shoot any photos at the starting concourse when most of the cars were in one spot in front of the hotel. Since then the pack has been strung out over an hour or more of road or around a hotel at night. I do my best to find them all and grab a shot of every car.

I take the Jag to the car wash area to shine her up after the long week of just over 1000 miles, and Dad shows up with the keys to a new Mercedes E-55 sedan. Mercedes has loaned several support vehicles to the rally and this is one of them. It has a 5.5 liter V8 in a plain vanilla E-class sedan. It turns out to be a total stealth car. Since it is an obvious Autobahn car we drive it over to the adjacent Interstate freeway for some high speed runs. On the way over on the two lane roads it does not seem to be anything special beyond the usual Mercedes style and excellent fit and finish. Teutonic elegance in its usual spare fashion. Nothing flamboyant here... until we turn up the onramp and point it down the Autobahn. Awesome. Jaw-dropping acceleration. We blow by everything on the road with absolute ease. This thing could easliy leave even the best Porsches in the dust. We time it from 0-60 at 5 seconds flat, and 0-100 in 13 seconds. Add to that the fact that it was smooth and quiet as you would expect from an E-class (or any for that matter) Mercedes! The Jag can pull similar feats but it is accompanied by a snarling growl from the straight 6 XK under the bulging hood. The E-55 does it smooth and quiet. WOW. This thing *can't* be legal.

The final dinner banquet was a bit chaotic (but still minus the theatrics and curses from any demented Bugatti owners we had last year) with the "car wear" fashion show and the awards followed by the charity auction. I'm sure it was an oversight on Rich Taylor's part that no mention was made of the overall winner? We were 2nd in our class in the rally, which was won overall by the Corvette Stingray driven by Fred & John Ehle who also won our class (Late modern over 4 liter.) We topped our class in the speed events mostly due to the Cobra bowing out of the trip around the cones. I thanked Mr. Jackson for his kindness later. We were two spark plugs shy of every other car in our class but still did pretty good.

For winning our class' speed events I'll be enjoying some real vermont maple syrup on my breakfast waffles for a while:

Dad collects his prize (from Mary Ritzman of Mercedes) for having a "sweet" car: a jug of Vermont Maple Syrup.

The final results table can be found here.

-chuck